Editor's Note: If you have the QuickTime plug-in, you can view clips from selected films where indicated.

"It's all error... There's only error. There's the heart of the world. Nobody finds his life. That is life." Philip Roth I Married A Communist

American animator David Ehrlich lives in the woods, but he's not lost like Dante, for he knows his way as well as any of us can. These Vermont woods offer Ehrlich a modicum of harmony through their indispensable songs of nature. Films like Vermont Étude (1977) and Dance of Nature (1991) evoke these natural melodies and their mysterious cyclical routes, but more so, his life and all its borrowed breaths are rooted in the same uncertainty, ugliness and beauty. His images are restless and at times it's as if they, like Ehrlich, are in search of their life; a life that fits; a life that unleashes the soul from confusion, anger and frustration.
 

View Taking Color for a Walk, one of Ehrlich's two new films. It was presented at the Ottawa International Animation Festival where Ehrlich, subject of a career retrospective, also served as Honorary President of the Festival. © David Ehrlich.

This year, at least, life appears to fit David Ehrlich just fine. In May, Dreamland Publishing in France released David Ehrlich: Citizen of the World by scholar Olivier Cotte. In June, Ehrlich received the prestigious ASIFA Achievement Award at the Zagreb Animation Festival. And in October he served as Honorary President for the Ottawa International Animation Festival alongside a retrospective of his work, which included not one, but two new films: Taking Color For a Walk (2002) and Current Events (2002). Not a bad year for ANY independent animator let alone an experimental one.

 

 

 

So okay fair enough, this guy got some nice accolades, but who, you ask, is David Ehrlich? First and foremost, Ehrlich is an independent experimental animator. He's been making almost one film per year since 1975. His most acclaimed works include Precious Metal (1980), Dissipative Dialogues (1982), Dryads (1988) and A Child's Dream (1990). Since 1992, he's been teaching animation at the ol' Animal House stomping grounds at Dartmouth College, and since the mid-1970s, he has taught numerous children's workshops around the world. From 1988-2000, Ehrlich was an Executive Board member of ASIFA International.